Just Catch Me As I Fall
by xox-hattii-xox
Summary: Within the tears of her grief, and the fire of her pain, Elena will arise in her new body. Mourning the loss of a fallen brother, Damon will guard the one he left behind. Damon x Elena. A.U


Just Catch Me As I Fall.

_There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go. ~Author Unknown_

_Can you still see the heart of me  
All my agony fades away  
When you hold me in your embrace_

_Don't tear me down  
For all I need  
Make my heart a better place  
Give me something I can believe  
Don't turn me down  
You're far from the door now  
Don't let it close_

Within Temptation – All I Need

The earth beneath her feet shifted, twisting above her head as the sky flipped her and the air around her shattered. Every jagged piece of the gas found it's way inside of her, scratching down her throat as they shoved and squeezed their way down.

But nothing made it's way into her waiting lungs and nothing escaped. Instead this nightmare into which her sunny day had been thrust slowed almost into a film-reel. It wasn't her eyes watching the picnic-turned-horror-movie, but she saw the scene as though she were floating above it.

A terrified scream fought for survival at the back of her mouth, as it wrestled it's way through her gums, across her tongue and ripping lips apart.

"Elena!" A different voice. It cut through her scream as the arms wrapped around her were jerked away. Another set, a different set, took their place and then she was flying, the forest moving around her like a whirlwind of green.

The colours faded into grey as she was set on her feet and left alone as her savior ran to help the one they left behind.

She'd find out later that he was too late

* * *

_No-one said anything to me when I arrived back at the house, Damon propping me up as I stumbled up the stairs. No-one spoke to me, but I could hear Damon spinning lies to weave around the truth. _

_Jeremy broke the silence after three days, handing me this Journal, after the pages of my previous one burned in the fire._

_He made me promise to fill it up. I tucked it under my pillow, keeping my eyes on the window and never on his face. He left after a few more minutes of silence, keeping the door open so he and Jenna could hear me while I screamed at night._

_Was there any point? The pages are so blank. The binding is so large._

_But my writing's so small._

_

* * *

_

Two unmoving shadows hunched in the rain around a slab of stone. Droplets of water shimmered like diamonds on the marble and cascaded down in shimmering crystal rivulets, over words etched into the stone. One lone raindrop dipped into the S, another in it's twin in the next word, the others pooling at the bases.

Others stood a way back in the background, like painted figures on a theater backdrop – never really there, just in the corner of your eye. All she could really see was the freshly pressed mound of earth, the flowers at the slab of stone and the grass as it rushed up to meet her.

He caught her as she fell, something he now realised he's probably have to get used to, and supported her against his shoulder.

He wasn't ready to say goodbye just yet.

* * *

_School doesn't exist anymore. My house... Damon's mansion...and the pages of this diary._

_Bonnie arrives while I sleep, or some I'm told. Jeremy seems to have taken on the role of my watch-dog, standing at the corners of my vision whenever I wake up and move around the house._

_Jenna doesn't come upstairs anymore. Doesn't come anywhere near me. She sleeps on the couch. She doesn't tell me, but I can see her room is as perfect as the last day she slept in it, and the covers are hidden under the couch with all the subtlety of a dog next to upturned grass._

_Anna stands with Jeremy sometimes, holding his hand and whispering words of comfort, both of them thinking that I'm not listening. As though I don't exist._

_When I leave the house to visit Damon, I doubt they even notice I'm gone._

_

* * *

_

The Salvatore house felt bigger than she remembered. The carpeted hallways went on for what felt like forever, leading to dauntingly empty rooms. She wandered the halls like a wraith, her arms wrapped around her skeletal stomach, following his ghosts as it floats just beyond her reach and calling her to him.

And all the while Damon followed her.

She sat in the living room, staring at the fire as though expecting something from the flames. He was sprawled on the couch, amber whiskey swilling about with cubed ice, cupped in his pale white hand.

They didn't talk, their silence speaking louder than any and all of the words each somehow knows the other has bottled up inside.

"Elena?"

Talking wasn't part of their unspoken agreement. She ambled into the kitchen as if she hadn't heard him.

* * *

_Caroline stopped by the other day. Without Matt. It's the first time I've seen her without him since they got together. She still smiled the same, and chatted the same._

_She spoke to me like nothing had changed. Like I wasn't sitting in the seat, staring at a space above her shoulder instead of her face._

_But it has changed._

_Just not for her._

_Only for me._

_

* * *

_

Time passed; however quickly or slowly Elena didn't know. All she knew was that one day, after she'd awoken on Damon's couch yet again, that two months had passed her by like a whirlwind of nothingness.

No-one spoke to her as she let herself in. They were all too familiar with her arriving at early hours of the morning after a night at Damon's. But no-one mentioned it – not even Anna gave her the meaningful glances that only a vampire with centuries of experience to their name can give anymore.

Lately, Jenna had started to talk to her again, breaking through her own cowardice of unhappiness to talk to her niece again. She began to try her own methods of mending heartbreak – but her carefree life involved heartbreak of boyfriend's skipping town, and the big sister she barely knew dying.

She never lost someone like Elena had.

* * *

_I'm spending less time at home now – Jenna's commitment to her Get-Me-Better plans, though with good intent, are grating on my nerves._

_The road to hell is paved with good intentions._

_So I go to Damon's house. That's nearly hell, right?_

_But now Jeremy is following me there, watching me with guarded eyes. And, because Jeremy is there, Anna is there too. _

_Elena, Damon, Jeremy, Anna... and His ghost._

_All one big, screwed up family._

_

* * *

_

"So who was it?" They thought she was asleep. And, if she were being honest, she was happy to let them believe that. Curiosity was being to leak back into her body.

"Who was what?" It was Damon who answered Anna's question.

"Who did...this," Anna skirted around the words that would make Elena fall under the swinging pendulum armed with a blade, her neck exposed delicately to the sharpened edge.

"No-body" Damon's voice was quiet. She could hear the clinking of ice as it hit his glass and the heady intoxicating scent of his whiskey as it permeated the air around her. She felt the presence of another body, a leather scented body, sitting by her place on the sofa, and her feet were lifted and placed in someone's lap. "It was a no-body. Just a vampire that Stefan met once,"

"Once?" She focused on Jeremy's voice as her body locked down at His name. A cold hand gently wrapped around her ankle. And she knew that Damon knew she was awake. But he wasn't saying anything.

"My brother always made a lasting impression on the people he met," Damon chuckled under his breath. "This guy was offended by the way my brother chose to live. Offended enough to hunt him down,"

The thumb on the hand about her ankle made sweeping arcs along her bare skin, goosebumps rising from the coldness of Damon's skin. It was like butterfly wings, taunting the nerve endings and sending signals to her brain.

* * *

_It was a no-body. A mindless murderer._

_He took Him away from me._

_

* * *

_

She knew they visited her at night, while she was pretending to sleep. They were shapes in the darkness. Anna was almost feline, fluid even while stationary. Jeremy was strong, his stance protective as he stood over her 'sleeping' form.

But, while Damon rarely arrived, she knew his best. A man with all the power of a coiled snake waiting to spring. Beautiful with poison running deep within.

* * *

_My 'Sleeping' takes up most of my time. Actually sleeping takes up barely any. There are dusty purple smudges under my eyes, yet no-one questions them._

_Whatever's left of my time is separated into wandering around Mystic Falls, Damon silently at my side, and inking words into these pages that seem as though they'll never end._

_Damon questioned me once about my journal. And when I wouldn't answer he asked Jeremy._

_I guess it's nice to know he's still a pain-in-the-ass._

_

* * *

_

"Do you have a heartbeat?" She asked, lying on her back and staring into the roaring fire while her hand rests on her chest, feeling the fluttering drumbeat through the thin fabric and the pale skin.

He quirked an eyebrow, gulping back more whiskey on the rocks, the honey-coloured liquid sliding away in seconds. "Why?" His lips twisted amusedly around the soft word, breaking through the silence.

"Curious," Was the simple answer.

"Yes," Was the simple reply. "I still run off blood,"

"But you ingest it... it's not in your veins, is it?"

"Yes...and no. I drink the blood, but it permeates through my cells and veins,"

"Oh," She had nothing else to say, and neither did he.

But she didn't see the soft smile playing about his painfully sinful lips.

* * *

_Anna and Jeremy are planning. And I know exactly what it is, because I spent most of my time...before...trying to come up with the exact same conversation that they keep having repeatedly. Different words, but the same meanings over and over._

_If you wanna be with someone forever, you have to live forever._

_

* * *

_

"Elle?" She looked up, because Jeremy hasn't called her that in the longest time. It's a name laced in Popsicle grins, cookie dough and finger-painting on a rainy day.

"Jer?" And her voice sounded so child-like, so quiet.

"Elena, I need to talk to you," The air became stiff as cardboard left in the sun. She sat up from her place on the couch (The cushions now had a faint Elena-Imprint) and realised that both Anna and Damon were gone. Hunting, she decided, pushing the thoughts away and focusing on her baby brother.

He looked so nervous, his hands twisting into violent shapes as his left leg jittered, that she had to take pity on him.

"She's turning you, isn't she?" The words were short, clinical, cut off by scissor lips curved in a half-moon smile.

Jeremy's eyes widened, the green flickering with the reflection of the fireplace. "Elena-"

"It's okay, Jer. I don't mind,"

He moved from his seat to her side, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her closer, ignoring the delicate glass-like structure of her rib-cage. "I'm not asking for approval, Elle," And she smiled at his words, because they were so quintessentially Jeremy. "Because you know damn well I'd do it anyway. But I _do _need to talk to you. I don't want to watch you grow old and...die," The word is strangled as it claws it's way out of his throat. "I don't want forever without you either,"

Her breath caught on her tongue, tripping as it fell out of her lips in a startled exhale.

"I'll think about it," She told him, her voice quiet and ending the discussion.

He nodded once and left the room, leaving too many thoughts crashing around in the air around him.

* * *

_Eternal life is the last thing I want._

_

* * *

_

He was there when she woke up, whiskey in his hand as usual and his leather-scent teasing her nostrils.

"Anna told me," No hello.

No answer.

"What do _you _want, Elena?" He moved too quick for her bleary, sleepy, _human _eyes to see.

No answer.

"Will you answer me?"

"Yes," The word was like sandpaper along her throat.

His lips creased upwards into a V grin. "Which one are you answering?"

"Both," She rolled over to face him, her sleep-strewn hair falling about her thin face. She bent her knees and encircled her legs with her worryingly thin arms. "And neither,"

"I can't remember; were you always this frustrating?" But she could tell he was amused by the enigmatic answer.

His fingertips danced over the quilt that keeps her cocooned in safety. He brushed the vines of hair from her face.

"Maybe," She moved in his touch, leaning in and cringing away at the same time.

"Tell me when you decide,"

A pregnant pause sounded as her eyes deciphered the cryptic locks around his. "I promise,"

* * *

_It's disconcerting. Watching my brother latched at Anna's wrist like a baby suckling from his mother._

_But his face, the intoxication of the act that's so sensual, iniquitous and dangerous._

_And hers, the beauty of the pain that spiders through her veins, matched with the seductively hooded eyes that watch him as a teardrop of scarlet rolls down his chin._

_And yet I can't take my eyes away._

_And Damon's wrist beside mine seems to take up my entire vision._

_

* * *

_

"He's in transition," Anna sat by her, Jeremy in the other room. "He's refusing to hunt. He's waiting for you,"

Three sentences. Three facts. She didn't make conversation, leaving Elena alone again after the last word tumbled from her curtain full lips.

* * *

_It's unfair. I'm unfair. Jeremy's unfair. The whole world is unfair._

_But __I honestly... I didn't care anymore. It would have made me just as apathetic to die at sixty, be hit by a bus, or watch Damon's teeth slice through my skin. I don't get too scared anymore._

_But it would have been selfish. I can't hurt Jeremy like that. And it would hurt Anna to see Jeremy hurt._

_I'm not sure if it would hurt Damon._

_But at least I'll have until the end of the world to fill this diary in._

_

* * *

_

He stood before her like an angel of death in a heavenly war – poised to strike when the enemy hit the gates. His eyes ghosted over her skin as she raised her wrist to his slightly parted lips. She shivered as his cold, fragrance breath whooshed out over the pale surface over her veins.

And his wrist moved to her mouth, an imprint of his perfectly curved teeth sunken within the flesh, tendrils of blood spiraling across his skin in untraceable patterns.

She didn't feel Damon bite - not even the testing graze of his teeth. Because then she was flying.

The world around the couch blurred, and inside their little bubble everything stopped except Elena's trembling body.

And then her neck snapped.

* * *

_Everything smells good. Deer, bears… even a mouse I saw from the corner of my eye. _

_The delivery boy at the front door... Jenna... Matt... Caroline._

_I want everything. My body itches from the inside out and I _need_ everything. And even though we live so far from town…I can smell them._

_I want them!_

_

* * *

_

Damon took her hand, whispering in her ear to hold her breath. She obliged, running with him through the trees while Anna took Jeremy along another pathway.

Her mind screamed at her_, _like a thousand wailing banshees screaming in the newly re-enforced shell of her ear.

They ran, feet moving quickly across the forest earth. Twigs and sticks cracked under their weight. She could see every flex of his muscles as the moonlight rippled along the sun-starved flesh.

"You need to kill," Damon told her as they reached the shadowed edges of the trees and stared at the nearby lights of an unknown town. "Kill and you become a vampire. You don't...you die," He shrugged, as though the second option wouldn't much bother him.

But she could see through it.

"Now go...take your first victim," He leant back against a mighty oak and gestured to the town of heartbeats, pounding like hummingbird wings. "And, Elena..." He stopped her as she took her first shaky step towards her meal. "Eat healthily," He winked and left her alone in the night, in search of his own prey.

She wasn't surprised. He'd never been the type to coddle.

Elena took another step towards the town. And another step into her next body.

* * *

_I killed. I am a killer._

_I don't want to remember it._

_

* * *

_

She was an elegant hunter, moving with all the gracility of a temptress. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet, so seductive. Not coppery like she remembered from her old body, but like ginger and cinnamon laced with honey.

She returned at nights with a necklace of blood rusting around her throat. Jeremy averted his eyes. But only because he just washed off his own choker of carmine. Anna nodded in appreciation, her fingers tracing Jeremy's jugular.

Damon ran his own digits around the blood ribbon on her neck, ghosting up and over her chin and across her coated lips. His own lips captured his fingers, sucking off the nectar.

"Delicious. You have good taste."

"I know,"

She left to walk the halls, not to escape Jeremy's and Anna's gaze. She figured that modesty would no longer be an issue if she would be be around them for eternity.

* * *

_Jenna left town. I guess she realised that Jer and I wouldn't be coming back. Damon collected our possessions from the house during the night – they're crowding the entrance hall._

_Well, mine are. Jeremy took his things to what's now his and Anna's room. I can't bring myself to choose a room yet._

_For now I'll stay on the couch, staring into the fire._

_

* * *

_

"She hasn't gotten any better," Anna's clear voice filtered through the ceiling to Elena's ears. She looked up at the patterned plaster above her head, hearing a set of pacing footsteps, heavy; her brother's.

"What do you expect? She didn't crush her pet hamster, this is Stefan we're talking about," Damon's voice tumbled through the ceiling, his voice staying in one place while the footsteps continued to pace.

So, they had all convened to talk in whispers behind her back.

"But _you're _fine," Jeremy snapped, his gait halting for a second before resuming at double speed.

"I've spent centuries with my brother. Most of them hating him. I'd almost had enough of him,"

"You don't mean that," Anna's voice admonished.

"Don't I?" Elena almost smiled at the petulance lingering in every syllable of Damon's speech. "But, as I said, Centuries. Elena was only beginning her centuries with him. She's lost a lot of time with him. She's grieving both him, and every second they were going to spend together,"

The door slammed shut behind her as she left the house, tears rolling like broken diamonds down her cheeks.

She stopped at the forest's edge and looked back to see Damon watching her from the window. He nodded once in understanding and turned away, allowing her to break down in peace.

* * *

_Damon understands._

_I suppose I'll have to get used to saying that, though the words sound almost foreign on my tongue._

_I'm running out of things to say in this journal. All of eternity, and no words to fill it._

_

* * *

_

There were vague moments of silence when the outside world seemed to come back to her.

It had been nearly six months since...it happened. And she'd spent one as a vampire.

Rumours were beginning to fly around the towns outside of Mystic Falls. Of wild animals on the half that Anna and Jeremy chose to hunt within, attacking human and leaving the bloodless corpses hanging in the river like porcelain china dolls in the rain – their faces frozen forever in time with rosebud lips asking for one last kiss.

However, on the other half, different rumours were weaved from different memories. Stories of an divine phantom with eyes burning like wildfire had been exchanged.

She is not cautious enough.

She does not care enough.

* * *

_I suppose it's surprising to no-one. Everyone saw the box secreted in Jeremy's pants pockets for the two weeks before the ring materialised on Anna's finger._

_The wedding date is set for December, when the snow begins to fall. Damon's best man, I'm maid of honour. _

_Damon doesn't see the point in the marriage. They'll be together for eternity, he says, can't make it anymore 'official' than that._

_I think it's nice._

_Happiness has to exist somewhere, right?_

_

* * *

_

Anna moved up behind her, her presence that of a gust a wind for all the difference it made to Elena. The clearing they were standing in, one behind the other and both facing the sunset, was dusted with amber leaves.

Elena took a deep breath, holding it in for moments and moments on end, letting it leak out through her ruby lips.

"What do you think for the theme?" Anna asked, not making any attempt to look her in the eye.

"For the wedding?"

"Yes," The unspoken _obviously _got caught up by the wind, whipping around Elena's face.

"I like your first idea,"

"Dusted silver and purple?"

"Yes,"

The unspoken acceptance and blessing got taken by the returning wind, breezing through Anna's hair and into her chest.

"Thanks,"

And Elena was left alone again.

* * *

_Anna flips through bridal magazines, asks me what colors I like best, what suits would look best on Damon and Jeremy._

_Damon protested to Anna's help. Said he had a tux from years ago that was in perfect condition. Jeremy just smiles and says it's Anna's decision._

_They're all smiling more. Now that they've realised that a simple quirk of the lips isn't going to send me spinning. It's slightly freaking me out, though._

_Not that I'll tell them that._

_I'm not weak._

_

* * *

_

"I hate small towns," Damon complained a week into October. "It's boring and, nothing to do,"

She flipped a page in her book (Non-fiction, you realise, nothing of romance or vampires), the sound whistling through the otherwise silent house. "You've kept yourself busy so far," She commented, half flippant, half pointedly.

"There's only so much fun a guy can have in this dead-end town. Not nearly enough new blood comes in – it all begins to taste the same,"

She arched a slender eyebrow. "Then I apologize on behalf of the town for not being tasty enough,"

He lifted his whiskey to his lips, the condensation running in rivulets off his glass and down the inside of his wrist. Elena watched the ice-cold water in fascination until his voice drew her away. "Sarcasm, little miss, doesn't suit," He mirrored her, raising an eyebrow.

"I'll keep that in mind,"

She got up and walked past him as he hovered in the doorway, nudging him in the ribs – almost playfully, but not quite.

She didn't see the way his face lit up in relief.

* * *

_I smiled today._

_It feels weird, like a pair of shoes I used to love and haven't worn in the longest time, tight and ... oddly freeing._

_

* * *

_

The scent of leather reached her before she heard him.

"Wanna go for a walk?" His jacket was already on, his keys in his hand and his foot nearly out the door.

She followed, and it was almost the same as when she was human and walked around the town square. She could smell the burgers from the Mystic Grill, only now she could hear the fat sizzle from across the street.

She still didn't like crowds. But now it was due to the congregated _lub, lub _of their heartbeats, drumming along like the beat of the damned. All of them were damned, even she and Damon. But they in a much more permanent way.

* * *

_I don't know what to make of Damon. Anna is very straightforward, Jer wears his heart smack-bang in the middle of his sleeve (So obvious that the blood almost accompanies the fabric) _

_But Damon is a mystery, a puzzling riddle so complex that the secret died long ago. It's hard to keep my jaw from dropping._

_He does it on purpose, that much I know._

_It's his own way of saying 'I told you so'_

_'I told you I was unforgettable'_

_

* * *

_

Anna's simple, yet ever so elegant dress flowed off her fluid body in rivers of white silk. Her delicate pianist hands clutched claw-like at a bunch of roses that Elena could already see beginning to wilt around the edges, but were still beautiful in death.

She can appreciate the symbolism.

Anna walked up the aisle alone, her eyes on Jeremy's. Elena heard their breath move the in the same moments and their heartbeats rocket towards the stars together – in perfect sync.

Jeremy looked dashing, his tuxedo black as jet, tendrils of dark hair falling before his eyes, which Anna tucked back as she arrived at his side.

The minister was no-one, but addressed the four of them, saying the familiar words with conviction.

God never made an appearance.

Elena smiled as Anna and Jeremy spoke their vows to one another – neither memorizing a speech, both bringing out the poetry in the other.

They signed a wedding license, and aside from the lack of a congregation, Elena almost forgot it was anything but a human wedding. When they kissed, she could tell the tears had made their appearance, trickling down her skin and into her crescent moon smile.

* * *

_Damon watched me cry._

_

* * *

_

Husband and wife moved across the tiny dance-floor music-box figures, seamless and beautiful.

Elena tucked her legs beneath her evening-purple dress, her arms lilies beside the silk, and watched her baby brother lead the way across the almost empty room. And, even though Anna had been reluctant to have a reception of only four people, Elena could see the beatific smile that stretched across her face.

The few lone tables were cloaked in more fine white, empty of plates and glasses, but lush with arrangements of the same roses that Anna had thrown in the air.

A shadow stood beside hers on the tablecloth, a whiskey set upon the silk. She looked up at Damon and the hand he held towards her.

"This dance, Miss Gilbert?" He asked, his eyebrow quirking.

Elena swallowed, suddenly nervous. She hesitated – because the last time they danced He had still been waiting in the wings to cut in.

In the corner of her eye, Anna and Jeremy spun, looking as though they invented dance themselves.

"One dance?" He persisted, beckoning with flicking fingers. "I promise not to let you crash."

She rolled her eyes, fighting the smile that threatened to play on her lips, sighed, and stood. "All right."

His hand in hers soothed her nerves as he led her onto the dance floor. Damon guided her dainty hand to his shoulder, curving his at her hip.

Uncertainly, she peeked up at him, locking gazes. Her first step into the dance, she stumbled over her heels. He confidently pulled her thin waist all the closer to keep her from falling, and they continued the dance.

When Damon unexpectedly spun her, she weaved out and back into his arms without missing a single beat. He smiled, and she smiled back.

His hand was now at the small of her back, her chest pressed even closer to his. She saw her breath flutter his shirt's collar for a moment, but their grace was unparalleled, so she kept her mouth shut and stepped in time.

One song merged into the next, which faded into another, which melted into another. And still they twirled in a continuous, unseeing, unaware loop.

Her awareness re-awoke with a jerk when the elegant music ended. There wasn't even enough space between them for wisp of air to slip through. Immediately she released her fingers, tangled in the hair at Damon's neck. And his arm around her waist slithered away.

Damon broke away from her. "Thank you."

Her shoulders dropped as the sudden tension relinquished it's hold… then Jeremy and Anna were there, hands clasped, smiling. The moonlight streaming through the window caught off their teeth as glances were exchanged.

She meant to comment on how beautiful their wedding was, how lovely they both looked, the beauty of their vows, _anything_, but any words got stuck in her lungs.

* * *

_It was just a dance._

_

* * *

_

The house just seemed much too big now. It was too big before, but with at least one of the four others always following her, it had always felt full.

Now it was just empty.

Elena sat on the couch, her nose picking out the bronze hints of whiskey in his hand as he moved about the house.

One staying still. The other always moving.

* * *

_Jer and Anna are back from their honey-moon. Their plane flew in last night, about twelve. Damon and I picked them up from the airport, the fluorescent lighting made us stand out all the more in the flocks of expectant mortals._

_When they arrived, it looked as though they were expecting something._

_Why does it feel like a jigsaw ... and I'm just missing all the pieces?_

_

* * *

_

"Elena?" Jeremy's voice was quiet, like the otherwise empty house. Both Damon and Anna were out hunting, leaving brother and sister alone. "Anna wanted me to show you this,"

Elena noticed, then, a slip of glossy paper in his hand. A photo. "It's from the wedding."

"Why?"

He didn't answer, sliding the photo to her. It shone in the fire-light.

"I didn't know anyone took a picture."

Anna and Jeremy stood, like models for some advert for the perfect wedding, their eyes smoldering with the happiness and love that almost seemed tangible – as though she could reach out and grab it.

"You look lovely,"

"That's not what I mean, Elena," His pale finger moved to a spot in the background, pulling her eyes with it.

His finger hovered above the minute versions of Elena and Damon, dancing together in the background.

And Elena saw...

His hand rested in an intimate way between her waist and hip, fingers gently sweeped across the fabric. Her hand tangling through the locks of hair at the nape of his neck. They were close enough that her dress swirled around not only her legs, but his as well. Their eyes were locked, fire burning slowly within each pair.

She swallowed. "Oh."

"I know,"

"I don't know what-"

"Most people only get one chance at a happy ending, Elena." Jeremy stood, leaving the photo in her now trembling finger-tips. "Keep that, we've got more,"

"Jer-"

"Just think, Elena. Goodnight,"

* * *

_I just don't feel that way about him._

_I can't say it. I can barely write it - the words just won't come out._

_

* * *

_

She was unsure if Damon knew anything about hers and Jeremy's conversation. Or whether he and Anna had had a similar talk.

The only thing she was aware of was the fact that he was beside her, as usual, her feet in his lap, as usual, whiskey in his hands, as usual, and the scent of broken and torn leather tingling in her nostrils.

And they didn't say a word.

* * *

_It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance._

_I still can't get it out of my head._

_It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance._

_And if it wasn't just a dance? Did that mean that they weren't just walks? Just hunting trips? Just comforting? Just silence?_

_It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance. It was just a dance._

_Was it?_

_

* * *

_

Above her head, the midnight sky seemed to burn black as she passed, undisturbed, across a large headstone, the name fading into the rock and patches of crumbling moss attached like a leech feeding off a host.

She stopped, staring at a slab of stone a few meters away from the light of the solitary lamp standing guard against the night. In the distance, a cat yowled in discomfort from the sudden chill that swept the night. The air appeared to freeze, the wind that had been blowing previously halted with such a suddenness that it seemed to defy the elements themselves.

She hadn't come here before, but a posy of forget-me-nots hung between her fingers, quivering as she laid them on the grass. She used to spend a lot of time at her parent's graves. It was as though she were still with them... but here it just felt empty. No memories swarmed here, like they had everywhere else. Because here wasn't a place where Stefan had been. Here was the place where he now slept beneath the earth.

She was in the center of the graveyard, alone, staring at a grave.

But she breathed in deeply, filling her lungs with air, feeling the night spill into her. Her eyes closed, the moonlight cold against her skin.

The wind picked up again, whipping around her like the beginnings of a tornado, then stopped.

Her lips, rose-bud red, widened into an open smile.

* * *

_The ghost has gone._

_

* * *

_

How long she remained standing there, it was impossible to tell. Dawn broke, the red leaking over the sky, followed by the light blue of the day. The blue faded to black, and the cycle repeated again.

"Good Evening."

She turned. He was here, the original version of the picture she'd had against her closed eyelids, as she'd seen him while she dreamt all throughout the time she'd been there.

"Damon," The word is the freedom in heart, the whiskey on her tongue, the leather in her nose.

But now it made sense. The jigsaw's missing pieces had finally been found, linking together in a way so fluid and concise that it seemed impossible to tear them apart.

He must have seen it as it burst out of her, of her lungs and lips and eyes.

Because then his arms were around her, crushing her to his broad chest as she sighed at the contact, finding her place amongst the years of loneliness. Her eyes closed, ear pressed to his heart. Her body shivered, rocked, stuttered. Her cheeks grew wet. His leather-scent filled her from the inside out.

* * *

_His lips taste of Whiskey_

_

* * *

_

_The End._


End file.
